


some kind of love (when you're scared you're gonna lose)

by CoachMegleg



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Feelings Realization, Fluff, Game: Destiny 2 Spoilers, Identity Issues, Loss of Identity, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26096968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoachMegleg/pseuds/CoachMegleg
Summary: “Do you think we still would've been friends, if things had been different? If we weren't-”“Uldren-” Jolyon remembered turning, watching the Prince's eyes dart to the side, unable to meet his gaze. His voice dipped low, soft with the weight of this secret that only he would ever be able to hear, “I doubt even the universe itself could keep me from your side for very long.”(Takes places after "holdfast your wretched, withered heart" but can be read as a stand-alone)
Relationships: Uldren Sov/Jolyon Till the Rachis
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	some kind of love (when you're scared you're gonna lose)

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write some more for Uldren and Jolyon, so it's time for some fluff! I'm jumping on the bandwagon of Uldren's new Guardian name being Crow because Bungie won't give me the official lore 
> 
> If you didn't read "holdfast your wretched, withered heart"- you only need to know that Uldren is a newly resurrected Guardian going by the name Crow, and Jolyon is still very gay for him
> 
> Lore References- Book: The Forsaken Prince (The Length of a Chain // Part 1) 
> 
> Title: Devil in Your Eye- Mumford and Sons 
> 
> Enjoy!

“ _Have you ever wanted to be something more?”_

“ _What do you mean?”_

_They spoke in hushed whispers, laying out side-by-side together on the soft, dewy grass. Raised voices would break the easy peace between the two of them, stuck within their own little world._

“ _Just- don't you ever wonder what you'd do if...if things were different?”_

“ _Well, I certainly wouldn't be sitting here listening to you wax poetically about philosophy-”_

_A well deserved smack on the arm was followed by soft, snickering laughter. The night air was filled with the joyful sound. Thankfully, he was the only one privy to this side of the Prince, the only one blessed to hear this laughter._

“ _Jol!-” a giggled laugh, the best sound in the world, “-I'm serious!”_

“ _Fine, fine. Go on, Your Princeliness.”_

_His laughter died down. An uneasy, nervous silence followed. Uldren fiddled with a stone on the ground._

“ _Do you think we still would've been friends, if things had been different? If we weren't-”_

“ _Uldren-” Jolyon remembered turning, watching the Prince's eyes dart to the side, unable to meet his gaze. His voice dipped low, soft with the weight of this secret that only he would ever be able to hear, “I doubt even the universe itself could keep me from your side for very long.”_

_A tender, almost heartbreaking smile. Oh, how he would've spent the rest of his life watching him smile like that._

“ _Jol-”_

“-yon?”

He startled awake, his eyes snapping open.

It took Jolyon a moment to orient himself, the haziness from the dream still clinging to his eyes as he squinted. There was a hand in his face, pulling away, back-dropped by the swirling blues and purples of the night sky over the Dreaming City. He remembered laying out on an isolated, grassy hill- he squinted his eyes as the hand retreated, a brush of fingers against his hair, only to be greeted by a far too familiar face, looking down at him with furrowed brows.

“Apologies- did I wake you?”

Crow stared down at him with a frown, an almost guilty look on his face, and it took a moment for Jolyon to realize just what had happened. They were enjoying the quiet, talking about everything and anything, Crow siting as Jolyon laid out against the grass. Jolyon was known as a storyteller for a reason, so he spun tales of all kinds as the Guardian hummed along, hanging upon every word. He told stories of far off planets, inter-galactic wars he never fought in, of gods and wishes and daring adventures.

(He never mentioned the Garden or its dark, inky tendrils)  
  
(Uldren was lost to him the moment he laid eyes upon that thing. Jolyon would be damned if he let the same happen to Crow)

As his own stories died down and the Guardian began telling his own tales from his relatively new resurrected life, he must've fallen asleep to the soft burr of Crow's voice. It certainly wouldn't be the first time he'd fallen asleep like this. So much had changed about his oldest friend- but not his voice.

Thankfully, whatever guiding force of the universe hadn't taken that away from him too.

“ 'm fine” his sleep-rough voice seemed to make Crow smile, a gentle upturn of the lips- so unlike the smiles he used to give him. Before...his smiles used to light up a room, full of mirth and mischief. Jolyon had gotten so used to reading his smiles that he knew- the wider the grin, the more trouble they were about to get into.

“ _You're a lot like your sister, except that when she plays dirty, she doesn't smile so big."_

“ _I got all the charm in the family.”_

It seemed that even after all this time, his smile still took his breath away.

“You can go back to sleep, you looked like you needed it.”

“I sleep fine-”

“Oh yeah?” Crow snickered, giving Jolyon an amused look (he tried not to imagine the hint of fondness he saw in those eyes), “those bags under your eyes say otherwis-”

“Hey!” Jolyon smacked his arm in retaliation, making the other man's laugh louder, “Not all of us can be immortal Guardians who don't need sleep.” Crow said nothing in retaliation, but his smile and lingering laughter sent a blossom of warmth through Jolyon's chest.

This felt so much like the old days. Just the two of them, joking and laughing and just _being_. No rules. No responsibilities. No titles and expectations and destinies hanging over their heads.

Just them. Jolyon and his Crow.

It felt so familiar to slip into this easy comradery between them. Once the awkwardness and hesitation had melted away after their first meeting in the Gardens, it almost felt like old times. Crow slowly began to warm up to Jolyon, and the sniper would be lying if he said his heart didn't skip a beat seeing the Guardian smile his way (dammit, he'd even gotten soft the his Ghost- Pork chop? What kind of name was that anyway?)

He can't stare at his smiling face for too long, lest the long forgotten ache in his chest return tenfold. Jolyon turned his head slightly, expecting to feel grass upon his cheek- but he felt something warm. The slight scratch of fabric. He frowned, the last tendrils of sleep finally unclogging his mind when he realized just where he was. When had...?

“Why am I in your lap?”

There it was- that guilty expression again on Crow's face. It was a common sight these days.

“ _You knew me...from before?”_

“ _Some would say I knew you better than I knew myself.”_

Jolyon had stopped trying to jog his memory of their past together- the sight of his guilt twisted face, his downcast eyes and unhappy frown whenever he failed to remember something made what was left of his heart ache. He'd dropped the subject entirely. He wasn't about to test his luck anymore than he already had. Someday, he might remember their past. No matter how disappointed he may be, he just had to...try and let it happen naturally.

“I-uh-well-” it wasn't often that Jolyon heard Crow stutter, hell- he'd never even heard Uldren stumble over his words before. The Prince had always had such a cool and confidant way with words- you couldn't be the Master of Crows without some verbal elegance. So, to hear him now made his heart flutter in his chest.“I thought- the ground isn't that comfortable to sleep on- and-!”

“It's okay,” his soft voice stopped Crow, lips slightly parted mid-ramble, “I didn't say I disliked it.”

Was it too much too soon? He only recently had formed this uneasy, shaky friendship with the newly resurrected Guardian. For all Crow knew, Jolyon was a stranger. No matter how easily they seemed to fall in step with each other, Jolyon knew it was far too soon to reveal everything. But why was it so much easier to be honest with Crow than it had been with Uldren?

Had it been Uldren whose lap he fell asleep in, Jolyon would've denied it. They both would've laughed as they toed the line between friendship and something more, neither daring to overstep. They never put any words to what they were, but it had always been “Uldren and Jolyon”. Never “Uldren” and “Jolyon”- they'd always been together. Never apart, but never anything more. They never stepped beyond the realm of friendship, no matter how long his heart had ached for the other man. Jolyon hadn't been strong enough to take the plunge until now.

What made this time different? He didn't know, but he quickly pressed his lips together in a futile attempt to keep these bubbling feelings locked inside his chest. He'd already said too much.

Hoped for too much.

It was odd, thinking of Uldren and Crow as two different people. They shared the same face, the same voice. But their smiles were different, their laughs no longer the same. The darkness behind Uldren's eyes were gone in Crow's, now filled with the guarded wonder and curiosity he hadn't seen in ages. The man sitting with him now was not the one he'd lost years ago.

How could he so quickly replace Uldren with Crow? Was it wrong? Why did Crow make his heart hammer in his chest the same way Uldren had?

An almost stiflingly awkward silence fell over the two men, and Jolyon was damn near about to bolt out of his lap when Crow breathed out a soft, “We've done this before...haven't we?”

Jolyon stared, dumbfounded, as Crow moved his hand back to his head, those achingly familiar fingers having slipped back between strands of silver hair. He couldn't speak, the words trapped around the lump in his throat, but his strangled silence didn't deter the Guardian from continuing.

“It just...felt familiar. You have this little frown on your face when you sleep,” a small smile tugged at the corner of Crow's lips again as he ran his fingers reverently through Jolyon's hair, a subtle, mindless motion as if he'd done it thousands of times before (he had, _he had_ ), “I hope I did not overstep any boundaries but, you looked far more comfortable and-and it felt _right_ and-and you looked so peaceful once I moved you. I wanted to and- Jolyon? Jolyon, why are you _crying_?”

He hadn't even noticed the silent tears streaming down his cheeks, since all he could focus on was Crow's face. In the way he smiled, how his eyes crinkled a bit at the edges, the way he wrinkled his nose every time he frowned. He no longer pictured his face being taken over by that dark, withering heart- now he dreamed of his soft smile, bathed in starlight, familiar hands combing through his hair as he no longer had to pretend to sleep.

This kind man before him was not Uldren. He never would be Uldren again. But that didn't matter.

Crow may not have Uldren's memories, or his smile, or the darkness lingering behind his eyes- but he still had his heart.

He couldn't lose him again. He'd been left behind before and had ultimately lost him- he wouldn't survive losing someone he cared so deeply for again.

It would ruin him.

Jolyon reached up with shaky hands to grasp Crow's wrist, stopping him from withdrawing his gentle touch. “Don't leave,” he pleaded in a broken whisper, cursing himself for being so vulnerable, so _weak_ , “Please-”

“Jolyon.”

“-I'm sorry I-”

“ _Jolyon!_ ”

“-I already lost you once-”

The kiss that shut him up was tender and achingly sweet. It was so brief that for one heartbreaking moment, Jolyon thought he might still be dreaming. But the warmth against his lips and the gentle press of Crow's body now so much closer to his- he couldn't be dreaming. Whenever he imagined a moment like this, it was never so...soft. So quiet. In darker moments, when he laid awake with only his depraved thoughts for company, he'd imagined pinning Uldren against the armory wall, their kisses bruising and biting with an insatiable desire bordering on lust rather than passion.

Yet this kiss.

Jolyon was no poet. He spun tales and wove stories, but he didn't have a way with words like the poets of old. But this kiss? It felt like coming home. It felt like the frayed pieces of his tangled, dark heart were slowly weaving themselves back together. It was far better than any fantasy he'd imagined before.

It was so painfully _Crow_ that even as the Guardian pulled away, Jolyon found it hard to breathe. He leaned up to chase after those lips, only managing a brief, fleeting kiss before Crow was out of reach again. A dark flush was over the Guardian's cheeks, but there was no regret in his eyes. No anger or disgust.

“I don't know what happened with who I was before,” Crow said, a hint of resentment in his voice (for himself- or that damned Traveler, Jolyon would never know), “but I know whoever I was before probably wasn't the...best person. I've run into enough Guardians to know that. But you-” Jolyon hated that mournful smile on his face, he wanted to reach up and kiss him just to see his eyes light up again- “you've never treated me like that. You've treated me like...like I _matter_.”

 _Oh you do,_ he wanted to say, but the words were stuck in his throat, _you've always mattered to me._

“It's still unclear if I'll ever fully remember who I was, what I did. Yet when I saw your face in the Gardens, I-I felt like I'd known you all my life. It felt like the universe itself was pulling me towards you.” Crow reached down again, cupping Jolyon's cheek as the man in question stared up at him in wonder. “Maybe it was destiny after all, but I don't want to disappoint you-”

“Never,” Jolyon moved to sit up, kneeling in front of him so they were face-to-face, “you'd never disappoint me.”

“But I'm not _him_ -”

“I don't need you to be,” Jolyon leaned in, ghosting his lips across the Guardian's in a fleeting kiss, “I only need you to be _you_.”

As Crow closed the distance between their lips and tangled his fingers through his hair, Jolyon Till the Rachis stopped lying to himself that night.

His Uldren was gone. No amount of wishing could ever bring him back. The dark, beating heart of the Black Garden had taken him so long ago. That damned Traveler, that unholy relic of light and harbinger of destruction he'd hated for so long, gave him something more.

Something he never realized he'd have. A second chance.

The universe was on the brink of the unknown. The Darkness was now upon them, and so much was at stake. Yet, as his face was cupped in calloused, familiar hands, Jolyon knew that whatever happened, they would face it like they'd faced everything before.

Together.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this, and thank you for reading! :) If you want to come yell at me about these two, you can find me over on Twitter @ CoachMegleg


End file.
